He was covered in dirt, an old shoe on his head, and a feather in his nose. Zachary Zemeritus was not technically dead, but who really knew?
He could definitely pass for being passed-on.
TO THE SUBWAY
“I’m sorry he had to leave, but it was better without him,” Bryan said as the group headed to the subway. With the sun peeking over the horizon, they were among the last people out from the night before. And the first to face the new morning.
“What are you talking about, dude? Things got boring after he left,” Timmy Jimmy said.
“Look who has a man-crush,” Dani said.
Timmy Jimmy’s cheeks flushed.
“Oh, now, don’t get your feelings hurt,” Dani said. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, leaving a short streak of strawberry-pink lip gloss. “I feel the same way.”
As they walked along, talking and laughing, Dani gave the steel belt around her waist a quick tug to adjust the fit.
“Hey. Can I ask you something?” Bryan asked, spotting the adjustment.
“If you’re going to ask what I’m doing, it’s my shield. Unless the strap sits just right, the metal gives me one hell of a rash.”
“Why do you wear that steel chastity belt? I mean, sorry, I don’t mean to be rude—”
“But you will be anyway.”
“I just mean, what do you need a chastity belt for?”
“My father’s idea. He’s a bit old-fashioned.”
“Yeah, but, um—you can’t be, um, deflowered? Get pregnant, I mean.”
“Well, he doesn’t know that.”
“He doesn’t realize you’re a tranny?” Bryan gaped at her in disbelief. “Really?”
“Transgendered female. Can’t anyone get that right?”
“Okay, whatever, you transgend-nerd,” Bryan said, chuckling. “Riddle me this, then: How can your own father think you are an actual girl?”
“Ha. Oh, I see the confusion.”
They swiped their wrist implants past the reader eye at the gate to the subway, were identified as non-criminal, and entered.
“My mom got pregnant and next they split up. I was raised by her and her parents, who are first generation Vietnamese American. My father didn’t come back to ‘get to know me better’ until I was fourteen. He was trying to overcome some kind of racial stereotype, I think. By that time, I was all-girl, as far as the world was concerned. I passed. And, well, there’s the whole ‘Danny/Dani’ thing, so he never caught on. The belt was his idea of keeping me safe, chaste.”
“That’s so weird. Why don’t you just stop wearing it?”
Helena snickered, reading something on her iPhone 12G18.
Dani ignored her and continued. “I’m used to it, I guess. It’s comforting in a strange way. Plus, I prefer to imagine it’s Wonder Woman’s power belt26.”
The downtown R train thundered to the platform. The group scrambled on board and collapsed into adjacent seats. Bryan was seeing double. Timmy Jimmy fell immediately to sleep. Dani’s chastity belt made a slight clink on the plastic seat, similar to the sound of a belt buckle or chain. The train accelerated and hurtled through the black tunnel, controlled by a BMT bot named Barney.
A few stops along, Dani was the first to de-train. “‘Night, darlings!”
Helena was next. “Toodles.”
Timmy Jimmy was third. “Peace, man,” he said in a whisper, directed at the slumbering Bryan Solmes.
Bryan was slumped all by himself in the subway car, snoozing, when the beast arrived.
Deflagro Cinefactus27 was a member of the team of assassins sent to Earth. This demon was a touch smaller than the others (a “mere” thirteen and a half feet tall). It sprouted just one head on its massive shoulders. It also had a rather conventional pair of arms and legs. And a conventional pair of, well, penises (penii?). Unlike the other demons, Deflagro “Def C.” Cinefactus’s skull sported three horns—two on the sides at the usual locations, with one larger, rhino horn out front.
The monster from Hell stopped the storming subway cars by overinflating its gas-filled belly. The speeding subway bounced off the beast’s midsection, derailing the cars and setting sections of the R train and the nearby tracks and walls on fire. Def C leapt onto the subway car Bryan had fallen asleep in. The beast ripped through the metal roof, lifted Bryan by his neck, and started to tear the man’s upper body from his lower.28
While Bryan screamed, Def C bellowed into his face: “THE ZACHARY! WHERE IS THE ZACHARY!”
“Screw you, Satan. I’m going to heaven, despite what ...” Bryan blacked out for a second, but an instant later regained consciousness. “Despite what you think. I’ve always said my prayers.”
“TELL ME NOW OR DIE AND ROT IN HELL!”
“I’m as good as dead already, you stupid alien piece of crap.” Bryan spat blood at the beast.
Deflagro Cinefactus twisted Bryan’s head off, a grape from a vine, and popped the astonished noggin into its mouth. The monster chewed thoughtfully, then turned and swooped through the tunnel and back up into the threatening Manhattan skies.
UNDER REPAIR
What is life, when you’re pretty much just a dented head attached to a flappy body of crushed bones, snapped ligaments, and rolled-up muscles? Zachary’s body looked as if it had been pressed in a giant Panini-type sandwich maker. It almost appeared as if there were no longer any bones in the frame. His cranium looked a bit worse for wear, as well, with a deep divot on the left side. The indentation was substantial enough to hold a cup of soup, if it ever came down to that.
Zachary Zemeritus soaked in a purple bath of a variety of mixed-up, stirred-together chemicals. Blood and additional liquids percolated through rubber tubes—in one end of the unconscious, bumpy body, and out the other.29 On top of this, a bustling of wires and cables dashed in and out of various parts of his form. What appeared to be a high-tech salad strainer surrounded his head. Wires from the thing numbered in the hundreds.
These cords linked back to a set of high-speed servers stacked next to Zachary’s hospital bed. A series of nineteen monitors lined the wall above the computers. Each screen displayed a different statistical chart, or graph, or bits of text-based data. All the monitors blinked and changed every few seconds to reveal the most up-to-date facts and figures about the patient.
“Well, well, well, Mr. Zemeritus. You’ve had quite a fall. Heh, heh.”
Zachary didn’t respond, not out of rudeness, but because he was in a coma.
Dr. Emmanuel Grayzan strolled with a certain joie de vivre to the monitors. He read the information on each one in turn, saying, “Good,” at each monitor before turning his attention to the next.
“Good . . .
“Good . . .
“Good . . .
“Good . . .
“Good . . .
“Good . . .
“Good . . .
“Good . . .
“Good.”
He returned to the door, scratching some observations on his electronic clipboard. A white bot with a pink bow on its metal head appeared. She smelled of roses and peppermint.
“Ah, Nurse Mariam. I’ve taken a few notes. Would you please make sure they’re distributed to the other doctors assigned to Mr. Zemeritus’s case? Thank you.” He walked away.
The nurse bot zipped down the hall back to the nursing station. She inserted the clipboard, toast-like, into a slot in the desk. The clipboard whisked away to distribute the data to all parties concerned, but to none who were not concerned in the least.
Dr. Grayzan stopped at the coffee machine. He selected black, four sugars. The coffee machine scanned him and, in a nanosecond, calculated his height, weight, and BMI.30 It reduced the sugar to one. Scanning his blood pressure, it considered substituting decaffeinated coffee. Finally, the machine canceled the order altogether. Dr. Grayzan pounded the machine.
“Give me my coffee, you droid piece of—oh, hello, nurse.”
Mariam hovered a few inches above the d
octor’s right shoulder. “I just wanted to let you know that your notes on Patient Zemeritus have been distributed, as you requested.”
“Um, yes, yes. . . Thank you, nurse. That will be all.”
Mariam buzzed away as Grayzan kicked the coffee machine one last time. He stormed back to his office, muttering something about technology.
In her bedroom that night, Dani sat on the side of her bed and peered out at the Manhattan skyline across the river. She sighed and removed her blouse. Rain started to tap against her window like a lover summoning her attention. She undid her bra with a sigh, enjoying the feel of the cool air across her breasts.
She watched the light of a plane in the sky—a passenger jet most likely. Planes in the sky always made her think someone was heading home. Pondering home caused Dani to reflect on family. And family, about the one thing she could never have. She wanted more than anything to be pregnant. To give birth to a baby of her own making.
Dani stood and zipped her skirt open and let it drop. Pink lace panties covered the shiny metal device that protected her nonexistent female parts from penetration and impregnation—or from even being touched. She took the key from around her neck and unfastened the device. It fell to the carpet.
Lightning brightened the sky, followed a second later by grumbling thunder. The flash revealed Dani’s lonely member between her legs. Since she felt no man would ever willingly touch her there, as least not the type of man she wanted, she could never bear to touch herself.
She slipped into an oversized tee shirt and walked through the darkness to the bathroom. She switched on the light, closed the door, and stared at herself in the mirror. Not bad; well beyond passable. A pretty girl with a sad face—no different from most any girl.
Wrapping her hair up in a ponytail, she washed off her makeup and brushed her teeth. She killed the lamp and shuffled back to her bed.
Dani lay in the dark, listening to the rain. She wanted to cry. However, she couldn’t quite get it started. Most nights, the tears came with no effort on her part, but not tonight. Dani’s instincts told her she needed to be particularly strong from now on, but she had no idea why.
ZACHARY AWAKENS
Zachary Zemeritus roused from his induced coma.
Zach couldn’t remember how he got there, or why. With a great struggle, he raised an eyelid halfway and gazed about his hospital room with blurred tunnel vision. The lights were off where he rested, but the door wasn’t quite closed, allowing the glow from the hall lights to bleed into his room. Chatter floated toward him from the nursing station down the corridor.
His view of the world was hazy. No, wait. He peered out through gauze. Zach concentrated and at last discerned a shape, his own body laid out on the hospital bed. Only he was covered in white. White tape, white plaster.
A full body cast.
Pipes and straps held his arms and legs at unique angles. Other devices pinned his body in place on the bed. Zachary wanted to scream, but he couldn’t figure out a reason why he should. A voice echoing inside his brain reminded him.
“Citizen Zachary, glad to see you are awake now. Excellent. Based on my initial scans, you are not in good shape at all, however, I am picking up infinitesimal leveled activity in your extremities. Your vitals are working fine, if somewhat sluggish. I cannot get a reading on much else beyond that. Have you lost a limb, can you tell? Again, my readings are inconclusive.”
Zachary attempted to rise up, but found it impossible.
“I can’t lift my head,” he managed to say, although he did not speak this out loud. Instead, he used his brain to communicate with, well, the rest of his brain.
“Why not?” the other voice inside his skull asked.
“How would I know?”
“Can you raise your arm?”
“No.”
“Your hand?”
Zachary grunted. “No,” he said quietly, this time managing to speak the words in the real world outside his thoughts.
“A finger?”
After a long pause, Zachary responded again with, “No.”
“Oh, dear. This is worrisome. I hate to even suggest this, but your symptoms point to spinal column damage. Let me apologize right now. From all indications, you are—were—in phenomenal shape prior to the attack. I calculated you would be able to handle re-entry. Turns out, you could not. Crushed you like a cheap soda can.”
“What are you talking about? Wait. Let’s start over. Who the hell are you?”
“Ah, amnesia! Yes, to be expected. You are still in shock, to some degree, citizen. Allow me to reintroduce myself. I am Chief Borgnine, of the IPF. Most of my machinery, my body if you will, was destroyed. Before it shattered to bits, however, I managed to jettison the memory board containing, among other things, my AI-LPS.31 The unit was, is, in the form of a wasp. So, I drilled through your skull and into your brain. That is where I am now; that is why you can hear me.”
“What?” Zachary asked. He assumed the combination of drugs he soaked in and which were coursing through his body caused these hallucinations. Whatever the reason, he so wished he could be back in the peaceful bosom of his coma.
“I am talking about a safety feature,” Borgnine continued. “The RAM board and other essential micro – and nano-equipment are stored within all of us bots as a separate mini-bot of microscopic dimensions. This mini-bot resembles a wasp, with a detachable thorax, so the head can operate alone. Is that understood?”
Zach said nothing.
“I am monitoring your bodily functions with my thorax component at this moment,” Borgnine went on. “The thorax is embedded in your thigh. But for some reason I have yet to figure out, neither your adductor longus nor your quadriceps femoris are responding to the electrical impulses I am sending. Neither are any of the muscles in your arms or your neck. Clear?”
“You know? I kind of feel your explanation has made things less clear,” Zach said wearily.
“Let me try to explain further, then. An alien species attacked us with a mission to destroy you. I had no choice, as a member of the IPF, but to remove you from harm. In saving your life, I may have inadvertently caused temporary or permanent damage to parts or possibly all of your musculature and/or nervous system. If so, my sincerest apologies.”
“Don’t give it another thought,” Zach said. Then he passed out so fast, it was as if someone had shot him.
Which, in fact, someone had.
Nurse Mariam hovered by the bed, a spent hypodermic needle in her hand. Dr. Grayzan, who had been summoned, walked into the room.
“He was delirious, talking to himself, trying to move,” Nurse Mariam said. “Very agitated. I gave him a sedative.”
“Good. That was the right thing to do.”
Grayzan walked over to Zachary’s bed and, after pulling aside the gauze, lifted each of the patient’s eyelids in turn, shining his small flashlight into each watery orb.
“His eyes aren’t reacting right. Might be damage to his optic nerve as well. How the hell this man is even alive is beyond me.” Grayzan snapped the penlight off and jabbed it back into the breast pocket of his white coat. He put his stethoscope to his ears and listened to Zachary’s chest.
“Breathing raspy. Heartbeat irregular. Blood through the left ventricle weak and windy. Did you get all that, nurse?”
“Yes, doctor.”
“We must operate in the morning.”
“Excuse me, doctor, but do you not think you are rushing to judgment? Should you not first confer with the rest of the committee?”
“By the time the full team arrives from the Netherlands, Tokyo, and Johannesburg, this man will be dead. We must get started ASAFP.32 They can join in and complete their assigned sections of the series of operations as they arrive.”
“Very good, doctor. I will start the scheduling process and secure an operating theater.”
“Thank you, Nurse Mariam.”
The nurse bot buzzed cheerfully out the door and down the hall. Dr. Grayzan jott
ed down a note in his phone, swiped to contacts, and tapped on a number. The phone on the other end rang four times.
“Beemer.”
“Marty? Grayzan here.”
On the other end of the line, Martin Beemer hesitated. “How are you, Dr. Grayzan?” he asked, his voice scratchy.
“I’m good. How’s your latest epic coming along?”
“What? All right, I guess. Got a bit of a writer’s block at the moment.” Martin Beemer coughed. His throat was still sore, never having recovered 100% from being strangled by a demon from outer space. “What’s up?”
“Well, I just wanted to let you know. We’re operating on Patient ‘Z’ tomorrow.”
Silence. “I appreciate you telling me.”
“An all-day operation, by the way. I’ll text you the location information, but it will be right here on campus. So, do you mind me asking you something?”
“Depends.”
“Just wondering what your relationship is with this guy?”
Martin Beemer let out a loud sigh. “He and I go way back, that’s all. But more importantly, we have a mutual acquaintance who’s quite invested in whether Zachary Zemeritus lives or dies. Heavily invested in the outcome, to put a sharper point on it.”
“Playing it close to the vest are we? Well, fine. By the way, I’m giving Zemeritus no more than a 50% chance of surviving. Be sure to tell your ‘acquaintance,’ in case there’s anything they can do to help.”
Grayzan held the phone away from his ear as Beemer coughed harshly.
“Get some sleep, Marty,” Grayzan said. He hung up and stared absently in Zachary’s direction. Snapping out of his moment of introspection, he focused on Zachary.
Grayzan shook his head.
“Poor bugger,” he muttered. “Doesn’t stand a chance in Hell.”
BOOTY CALL
“I’m just in the mood, that’s all,” she said. “I need a sex buddy.”
“Look, I appreciate the booty call, Helena,” Timmy Jimmy said, wiping his finger across his nose to catch a drip of wet snot.33 “But I am definitely in no shape. Not even sure if I can get Saint Peter to rise.”
DEMON DAYS: Love, sex, death, and dark humor. This book has it all. Plus robots. Page 4
